The Great Circus Train Wreck of 1918: Tragedy Along the Indiana Lakeshore

In the pre-dawn hours on a June night in 1918, a train engineer drifted to sleep as the train chugged toward Hammond, Indiana, where it plowed into the idle Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus Train. More than two hundred circus performers were injured and eighty-six were killed. Lytle recounts the details of this tragedy and its role in the demise of a unique entertainment industry.